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Yesterday evening, just before story time, I was feeding Liam and I heard the sounds of “hide & seek” coming from the bathroom (where toothbrushing was supposed to be happening . . . and I imagine it did actually happen at some point). Benjamin isn’t 100% clear on hide & seek yet — he seems to manage to both hide and seek each time, but he really likes it. I heard both Dan and Benjamin count to 10, and then lots of giggling and “I found you!” followed by a serious “thud” and a cry. Not the I-need-to-think-about-how-bad-this-hurts cry, but the instantaneous, frightened, pained scream.

We woke up this morning to our first snowfall in Vienna of any real significance. By the time Benjamin got up, there was more than a dusting on the rooftops, and our terrace, which is pretty sheltered, but not enclosed, almost had a covering. Our rosemary, basil and cilantro plants (or rather, the pots the plants lived in when it was summer) had about an inch in each, as did the table where they sit.

So I’ve read and experimented with a lot of different food programs, from Atkins to vegetarian and including such oddities as intermittent fasting. I’ve got a pretty good sense for what works for my physiology and psychology. However, it’s been four years since I stuck to one well enough to maintain optimal health, and ten years since I successfully used one to reach a specific target body composition. I need additional motivation.

Just “trying harder” and expecting things to change long-term is a bit naive initially, but once you’ve done it a couple of times and failed, it approaches the definition of insanity. I need to change the game. So I intend to hack my motivation using the two greatest tools of the hacker: creativity and theft. Just kidding, but I am going to “borrow” from the successful hacks of others and creatively apply them to myself.

This is an incredibly powerful statement. It’s why step one in any effort to lose weight should be to keep a food log…and it’s why that simple act is so often the turning point for people. If there’s any aspect of your life that is out of your control, or simply missing, you can make a great stride towards changing that fact simply by measuring it.

Do you feel you’re wasting your life away in front of the television or computer? Is your weight out of control? Do you smoke and wish you didn’t? Does being fit seem attractive, but getting there impossible? Start recording your behavior. Just doing it for a single 24 hour period will be illuminating. The knowledge you gain might encourage you to continue for a week, and then maybe three. If you do something consistently for 3 weeks, it becomes a habit.(more…)

Timothy Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek, is matching all donations made by midnight Sunday (his birthday) on his page at DonorsChoose.org. The upper limit is a total of $100,000, so this is a real opportunity to make a difference. Please check it out, seriously. Donate whatever you can, and then spread the word yourself.

Learn How to Punch Through Walls, Leap from Building to Building, and Dodge Bullets….While Eating Popcorn

Are you stuck in the rat race? Is the biggest question in your life Who Moved My Cheese? If you have a spark of life in you, and want to rise above the conscious level of a rat, read on, buy yourself a copy of The Matrix, and jump to the next level.

Got up at 6:22 AM. I’d actually been awake since about 6 – I didn’t sleep well because it’s been unseasonably warm (70 degrees yesterday – not normal for the DC area in January) and I kept waking up sweating, but I never really woke up enough to actually ditch the down comforter in favor of just the sheet. This is what happens when you go to bed at 2:30 in the morning. Oh well. Hopefully getting up early today will help me get to sleep at a sensible hour tonight.

I weighed in at 189.5 pounds, which is great! That brings my weight loss total to 4 pounds in two days. Some of that is just the diet clearing out the food in my digestive tract, but I hadn’t been eating so heavily before that there was 4 pounds worth to clear out, so I’m pretty sure some of that is fat loss. I don’t, of course, expect this rate to continue – you always lose a few pounds quickly when you first gain control of your eating.

As usual, I have trouble getting to bed when I intend to. Between cleaning up the blog post, taking the dog out, taking care of my neighbor’s cat, and getting ready for bed (and probably some other things I missed), it was nearly 2 AM before I got in bed. I read ’til 2:30.

Also, my current wake-up discipline isn’t great – I didn’t get out of bed ’til 10am, which, at least is better than yesterday.

However, my weight was 192 this morning, which is definitely an improvement. (more…)

I’ve been a member of both. AllAdvantage had one of those deals where you downloaded a tool that showed you ads while you used your computer and paid you for looking. I remember that my co-workers and I all got it and we figured out that it was paying attention to mouse movement to decide if you were active or not. So of course one of my friends wrote a script that would move his pointer every few seconds so he could hit his max of “active” time (10-20 hours or something) in the first day of every month and then he could disable the ad banner until the following month. We made some change, but of course they eventually failed.

Then there was FreePC, where they offered you a Free PC and free dial-up Internet service (more…)